Live Update from the Field!
26 Dec 2010
Definitely an interesting day… I woke up at 3am, got ready and drove to Andrea & Tim’s place. By the time we loaded, fuelled and got to Folkestone it was past 7am. Luckily, our train was cancelled, so we weren’t late for the checkin! At the terminal, we met Dave and Olly from team dirty Dancers.
(pardon the brevity of this, I’m typing with bandages are my fingers!)
A quick thirty minutes under the chunnel and once in France we realise one tyre had a slow leak… fair enough, we have 2 spares… only thing is… after taking out everything from the boot… the spare is a steelie! Bah, no biggie, lets swap to the alloy strapped to the roof… which just happens to need even longer than normal bolts, so we could not use it… double-grumble… Steelie on the car (we had spare bolts for steelies) we proceeded…
Not long after, team Dirty Dancers (Dolly from now on) ran out of fuel, no issue as we were prepared – a short jet down the motorway and we came to the rescue with a jerry can of fuel for them. Eventually, as we approached Toulouse, we could not find a place to stay as the IBIS was full. So a quick google (roaming :S) found us a “hotel” in the middle of nowhere near Toulouse (at 12-euro a night, I’m not going to complain!). Not bad for a hostel; but not really a hotel… any how… refreshed (and after a nice shower) we hit the road again. Cue 27-12-2010!
After a quick stop in Andorra (which we left around 14:00), where we made full use of the duty-free status of shops, we headed into Spain. Long story short? We arrived at the hotel at 5:15am the day after! Quite tired really, but I can’t sleep. I’m sitting in the hotel room quite worried!
Tim didn’t appear on the booking sheet, so we lost some time there… And will probably need to pay extra for another room but what’s’ worse is that about 5 miles from the hotel, we heard a crunch and the front offside wheel started grinding and crunching all the way! I assume the bearings are shot! (oh, and while trying to figure something out, I got a finger trapped in the brake callipers not fun!)
Anyhow let me at least lie down and pretend to sleep! I’m already getting homesick and tired of the trip! This isn’t good!!!
M.